Psychology

The definition of the Social Learning Theory is that people learn by observation of others. This means that when you watch someone you are learning their mannerisms and movements. We also see this when we observe animals such as primates, they often copy what they see humans doing.

There have been many experiments to observe learning. One of these experiments was Banduras Bobo doll experiment. They took children and placed them into two different groups. Group A watched a video of adults beating the Bobo doll with a mallet, whereas Group B watched the adults being nice to the Bobo doll. When the put the children in the room with the doll the children from Group A beat the doll just as the adults had, but the children from Group B played nicely with it. This helped Bandura with his thoughts that Behavior Theories were too simple. He believed that a persons behavior and environment determine each other.

Many people believed that you just learned an action by observing it and that it was Monkey see, Monkey do. This was not the case, around 1990 some researchers found from implanting electrodes in a monkeys brain. When the monkey observed the scientist grasping objects or even drinking the brain waves lit up in the same area that activated when the monkey performed the action, they decided it was the cause of mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are what cause a person to react when they see someone else react, such as when a person is injured having pain in the same area, or becoming nauseous when you see someone get sick. Scientists are also looking into mirror neurons to see if they can find out more about empathy, autism, schizophrenia, language development, and to help stroke victims relearn certain things. Research shows also that mirror neurons help us decode body language and facial expressions.

Classical conditioning is best known because of Ivan Pavlov and his experiments with dogs. It is learning a behavior through the process of association between an environmental stimulus and naturally occurring stimuli. An example would be if you are taking a shower and you hear a specific noise then immediately the water gets cold, the next time you hear the noise you will react thinking the water will go cold again. Operant Conditioning is a learned behavior caused positive or negative reinforcement and punishment. Positive reinforcement is usually a reward of some kind and negative reinforcement is the removal of an unpleasant object or situation, both of which cause the behavior to increase. Punishment is the presentation of something unpleasant or the removal of something pleasant in order to decrease a certain behavior.

Both types of conditioning are part of the behaviorism movement whereas social learning theory is part of the cognitive movement they are almost the exact opposite in beliefs. Behaviorists believe that your environment determines your behavior, but in cognitive psychology they believe that both the environment and the behavior determine each other.

We can also look to the brain to find out what is going on during learning, by using implants on monkeys they discovered mirror neurons, with EEGs we can see brain waves during different actions and using an MRI we can see thought processes. Scientists have also discovered that neurotransmitters play a part in learning as well, the neurotransmitter Acetylcholine he been linked to learning and memory. They have also discovered that a problem with Acetylcholine function is possibly linked to Alzheimers.